Video Games Are Destroying the People Who Make Them

[crazy canuck]

Less comfort on a plane isn't really the same as behavior (overworking) that lead to health issues.

Overworking only rarely leads to health issues.  Riding on overcrowded airplanes only rarely leads to health issues.  The question is whether that choice should be made by individuals, or by government bureaucracies.

What role do you think government should have to regulate working conditions?

[grumbler]

No, he did. In his book, he goes to CD Projekt Red, makers of the Witcher series, a company without crunch. The main reasons on why they do not crunch are 1) company culture, founders don't believe in it, 2) Polish law requires overtime to be paid.

That's the kind of thing the op-ed author needs to include, if he wants to be comprehensive.  Having a law that says that even salaried workers must get overtime would go a long way towards reducing the use of crunch without creating a bunch of nanny-state rules that just invite evasion (yes, overtime laws are subject to abuse as well, but overtime is easier to define than crunch time is).

[grumbler]

What role do you think government should have to regulate working conditions?

Government should regulate to minimize the negative consequences of externalities, and to prevent the unilateral imposition of unsafe or unfair practices/conditions by either labor or management.  What role do you think government should have to regulate working conditions?

[crazy canuck]

What role do you think government should have to regulate working conditions?

Government should regulate to minimize the negative consequences of externalities, and to prevent the unilateral imposition of unsafe or unfair practices/conditions by either labor or management. 

What do you mean by "externalities" in the context of working conditions and particularly worker safety?

[Grey Fox]

No, he did. In his book, he goes to CD Projekt Red, makers of the Witcher series, a company without crunch. The main reasons on why they do not crunch are 1) company culture, founders don't believe in it, 2) Polish law requires overtime to be paid.

That's the kind of thing the op-ed author needs to include, if he wants to be comprehensive.  Having a law that says that even salaried workers must get overtime would go a long way towards reducing the use of crunch without creating a bunch of nanny-state rules that just invite evasion (yes, overtime laws are subject to abuse as well, but overtime is easier to define than crunch time is).

Yes, I only know it because I've read Jason's book.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Doesn't Jacob here do...something....in the video game industry?  A writer, was it?

[Razgovory]

Less comfort on a plane isn't really the same as behavior (overworking) that lead to health issues.

Overworking only rarely leads to health issues.

I'm fairly sure this is not true.

[Jacob]

Sounds like a case of chronic poor work flow scheduling.

Indeed, though the chronic poor work flow scheduling is structural rather than the result of individual poor decisions. From my point of view, the main factors that drive the chronic poor work flow scheduling are:

- Video-games tend to have to push some envelopes to be successful, whether creatively or technologically. Scoping and scheduling unknown factors are inherently a crap-shoot for a variety of reasons leading to a greater margin of error. Meanwhile, budgetary and development pressure will generally push the error of that margin on to the "underestimation" side.

- A video-game is usually judged to be done (internally) when it hits a particular subjective quality bar, not when it matches a particular set of easily defined benchmarks. You can only really judge whether you're approaching that quality bar when you're getting close to done, at which point you realize "not good enough" in a variety of categories and have to quickly decide how to make it "good enough". This is complicated by the fact that what makes it "good enough" is usually determined by a political process which often takes time as well.

- Game development typically commit to release days and development milestones in advance of defining and scoping the project fully.

- The executives who ultimately control the conditions that create the crunch do not have strong incentives not to, since they're not directly responsible for the health of the game development teams. Frequently publisher and developers are separate companies, and even where they are the same they're fairly separate groups.

[Jacob]

That's the kind of thing the op-ed author needs to include, if he wants to be comprehensive.  Having a law that says that even salaried workers must get overtime would go a long way towards reducing the use of crunch without creating a bunch of nanny-state rules that just invite evasion (yes, overtime laws are subject to abuse as well, but overtime is easier to define than crunch time is).

Yeah, paid OT - or paid comp. time equivalent to or greater than OT - would get rid of most crunch time I expect.

[Jacob]

Doesn't Jacob here do...something....in the video game industry?  A writer, was it?

I'm a producer these days.

We've been crunching recently....

[The Brain]

Does crunch time have anything to do with uncles and semen?

[Jacob]

Does crunch time have anything to do with uncles and semen?

Not in my experience, no.

[Caliga]

Does crunch time have anything to do with uncles and semen?

TOO SOON

[grumbler]

What do you mean by "externalities" in the context of working conditions and particularly worker safety?

ex·ter·nal·i·ty
ˌekstərˈnalədē/Submit
noun
plural noun: externalities
1.
ECONOMICS
a side effect or consequence of an industrial or commercial activity that affects other parties without this being reflected in the cost of the goods or services involved, such as the pollination of surrounding crops by bees kept for honey.

- Google Dictionary

[crazy canuck]

that I know you can cut and paste, if you wish, please answer my question of what you mean in the context of regulating working conditions and safety.